Nucor Corp. smashed its quarterly earnings record in the third quarter with profits on par with those for the entire year of 2018 – another good year for steel. And the Charlotte, N.C.-based steelmaker, North America’s largest, thinks the string of record profits – the prior record was the second quarter of this year – […]
When the books are written on a historic year for steel prices, we will probably look back at August and September as the months when things started falling apart. Why? Because that’s when the extraordinay gaps – between U.S. steel prices and those abroad, between steel prices and scrap prices, and between market senitment and […]
Sentiment among steel buyers tends to mirror steel prices. The higher the steel price, the higher the spirits of service center and manufacturing executives and the more optimistic they feel about their prospects. Steel Market Update data shows that the record-high steel prices of the past year have begun to moderate. But Steel Buyers Sentiment […]
As I bounce around the market this week talking to steel buyers, I am trying to get a better feel for potential changes, how contract negotiations are going, how receptive end-user customers are toward the higher prices being offered (compared to one year ago), and what kind of foreign steel offers are out there. The […]
Olympic Steel Inc.’s sale of its Detroit location to Venture Steel and its subsequent acquisition of Shaw Stainless & Alloys marked the latest step in a years’ long effort to pivot from roots in Midwestern carbon flat-rolled steel markets, the company’s top executive said. The Cleveland-based service center – while by no means exiting the region – […]
Olympic Steel Inc.’s sale of its Detroit location to Venture Steel and its subsequent acquisition of Shaw Stainless & Alloys marked the latest step in a years’ long effort to pivot from roots in Midwestern carbon flat-rolled steel markets, the company’s top executive said. The Cleveland-based service center – while by no means exiting the region – […]
Whether they believe steel prices are in for a sharp or a gradual correction, most of the service center and manufacturing executives responding to SMU’s latest survey agree the market is at a turning point. Here are a few of their recent observations: “Yes, I think we are at the inflection point. The market appears to be […]
Steel industry trade associations and other supporters of the Section 232 tariffs are strongly opposed to a bill introduced in Congress this week by U.S. Senators Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) called the Bicameral Congressional Trade Authority Act. Sponsors of the measure say it is designed to prevent potential presidential abuse of “national […]
Usinas Siderúrgicas de Minas Gerais S.A. (USIMINAS) will take a lengthy, unplanned outage – 90-150 days – at the No. 2 blast furnace at its Ipatinga Plant in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state. The Brazilian steelmaker said it would minimize the impact on customers in part by buying slabs on the open market to make up […]
The paralyzing blows from the semiconductor chip scarcity haven’t just been limited to automakers. Supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and logistical constraints have been decimating the domestic manufacturing sector at a similar clip, as detailed in a recently released white paper by a coalition of four major manufacturing associations. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturing […]
Steel Market Update’s foreign versus domestic price analysis elsewhere in this issue shows hot rolled imports still anywhere from $400 to $800 per ton cheaper than prices in the U.S., depending on the country of origin. The potential cost advantage remains very tempting to buyers willing to take on the risks of a long and […]
Market participants have sharply different views of which way prices will go over the next three months – but whichever camp you’re in, futures are your friend, according to one expert on the matter. Futures markets have seen steep selloffs in recent trading sessions, moves indicating that some industry participants think prices have peaked and are […]
Price dynamics in the steel market are starting to resemble an inverted yield curve, and market participants should treat the situation with appropriate caution. Plate mills and tube producers have announced significant price increases: $75 for tubular products ($3.75 per cwt), $80 per ton for plate and as much as $240 per ton for quenched and […]
By Trade Attorney Lewis Leibowitz While Section 232 has gotten a lot of attention in the last few years, the antidumping and countervailing duty laws have been the mainstay of protecting domestic industries from steel to aluminum to solar panels to auto parts for many years. In the runup to the 2020 election, the Commerce […]
By Trade Attorney Lewis Leibowitz The Section 232 tariffs are uppermost on people’s minds again, according to questions I’m getting from readers. My view is that the tariffs (and quotas and “monitoring”) have remained because of politics and the lack of ideas for reconciling the irreconcilable. We need a policy that protects domestic steel (and […]
At the top of the news this week, Steel Market Update sources reported that steel supplies are loosening as lead times from the domestic mills shorten and surging imports start to make it into service center inventories. It’s no surprise, then, that steel prices are beginning to moderate. Hot rolled steel prices rose virtually every […]
The week ahead could be pivotal for Section 232, infrastructure spending and the U.S. pivot toward Asia – all of which are increasingly interlinked, according to one policy expert. The Biden administration wants to ease or lift Section 232 tariffs on the European Union as part of efforts to form a broader coalition against China on […]
SMU contributor Tim Stevenson is a partner at Metal Edge Partners, a firm engaged in Risk Management and Strategic Advisory. In this role, he and his firm design and execute risk management strategies for clients along with providing process and analytical support. In Tim’s previous role, he was a Director at Cargill Risk Management, and […]
The benchmark price for hot rolled steel has declined for two weeks in a row, according to Steel Market Update’s latest surveys of steel buyers. In both cases, the decline was a mere $5 per ton. Margins of error being what they are, your takeaway should not be -$5, or even a decline (which could […]
Nucor plans to build a new, $2.7 billion electric-arc furnace (EAF) sheet mill with annual capacity of three million tons per year in either Ohio, Pennsylvania or West Virginia. The facility is aimed at customers in the Midwest and Northeast as well as at the automotive industry, the Charlotte, N.C.-based steelmaker said. “These important markets […]
By Trade Attorney Lewis Leibowitz The announcement last week that the U.S. would work to provide secret technology to Australia for that country to build and operate nuclear-powered submarines turned heads in the United States, but blew minds in France. The nuclear sub deal also terminated a $66 billion deal for France to supply diesel-powered […]
NLMK USA has again sued the U.S. government over Section 232 and wants at least $130 million awarded to it for tariffs it claims were “wrongfully extracted” by the Commerce Department. The steelmaker and slab converter – a subsidiary of Russia’s Novolipetsk Steel – also claims that “secret,” undocumented and “off-record” meetings and communications between Commerce and […]
The following article on the hot rolled coil (HRC), scrap and financial futures markets was written by Jack Marshall of Crunch Risk LLC. Here is how Jack saw trading over the past week: Hot Rolled Please fasten your seatbelts. Hot rolled futures are approaching some near-term turbulence. On the one hand, HR pricing is still […]
Hot-rolled coil prices fell modestly this week for the first time in more than a year, lead times slipped below nine weeks for the first time since mid-April, and inventories continue to inch upward. Everyone is tired of hearing about a “tipping point” to this “unprecedented” market. But how else do you interpret this? Imports, […]
The first rule of predicting steel prices in 2021 is you don’t predict steel prices. I broke that rule last month when I called a peak. I still think I was right about that. But timing is everything. And when exactly we hit that peak remains a matter of debate. Some market participants think we’re […]
Editor’s note: SMU Contributor David Feldstein is president of Rock Trading Advisors. David has over 20 years of trading experience in financial markets and has been active in the ferrous futures space for over eight years. You can learn more at www.thefeldstein.com or add him on twitter @TheFeldstein and on Instragram at #thefeldstein. Since Aug. […]
There’s a good chance the Section 232 tariffs on steel imports from the European Union could be replaced by a tariff rate quota (TRQ) as soon as November as a result of trade talks now under way between officials from the U.S. and EU. The EU is strongly opposed to the Trump-era “national security” tariffs […]
Lobbying groups for U.S. steel mills and the United Steelworkers (USW) union want trade restraints placed on the EU to prevent potential “import surges” from the region. The call – from the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI), the Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA) and the United Steelworkers union (USW) – comes even as the U.S. and the […]
By CRU Aluminum Advisor Greg Wittbecker The fundamentals in the aluminum market are continuing to tighten as we complete the third quarter. Growing Deficit in 2021 Driven by Chinese and Canadian Production Excursions CRU has substantially increased the size of the global deficit for 2021, moving it from a 240,000-ton surplus to a deficit of 1,180,000 […]
I was pleased to see many of you this past week in Atlanta at the SMU Steel Summit. It is certainly one of the largest (and most significant) steel conferences in the United States. This year was a first – a hybrid conference, with about 800 in-person attendees and 300 virtual. I doubt it will […]